Orchestra gives high-caliber performance

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT), Howard Tuvelle SPECIAL TO THE NEWS-TIMES

Published
1:00 am EST, Friday, November 19, 2004

Last Friday evening the Pawling Concert Series presented the "Camerata New York," a small orchestra of highly skilled performers, in a program of staples from the orchestral repertory.

The performance, given on the campus of

Trinity-Pawling School
and in their new
Gardiner Theater
, was one of the most satisfying I've heard by this size ensemble in many years. There was a good audience turnout in spite of a rather appalling evening of semi-snow and rain.

The conductor,
Richard Owen
Jr., has appeared internationally with orchestras of distinction, and his wife, principle cellist in the orchestra, created the idea of starting an ensemble with young and talented musicians making music on the "highest level." This, to be assured, they did.

The program began with "The Hebrides Overture (Fingal's Cave)," by

Felix Mendelssohn
(1809-1847). Mendelssohn was 21 and visiting Scotland when he got the idea for the overture. He was on an excursion to the famous basalt cavern on the tiny island of Staffa in the Hebrides, when the powerful waters and starkness of this imposing island stirred his imagination. He excitedly wrote to his sister, Fanny, and scrawled out the opening 20 measures of the overture. Completed and once revised, it is one of the finest seascapes ever written.

The Camerata captured the dark and somber moods and what also seemed to be the crashing of waves against the island's shores. With great precision conductor Owen and the orchestra had perfect control over contrasts and dynamics and all the subtleties in between  not just your basic fortes and pianissimos (louds and softs).

The term "Camerata" is a 16th century word meaning "academies," or small groups of musicians or people with literary interests. Applied to orchestras and by today's standards of very large orchestras, (of between 50 to 120 players) it does refer to a smaller ensemble. Yet in the program's second work, the "Symphony No.1 in C Major, Op.21," by
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827), this size orchestra is exactly what the composer wanted and for what he scored (wrote) the symphony. It is the typical size orchestra of Haydn and Mozart as well.

With almost flawless technique and razor-sharp togetherness, its performance was breathtaking. I felt as if hearing Beethoven's music, at last, as it was meant and for the instrumentation the composer conceptualized in his mind. Of course I could rhapsodize about the performance, the perfect ensemble playing, the sweeping gestures by the conductor, but suffice it to say the music was more intimately satisfying and immediate than what it would have been from the inflated sonorities of a large orchestra.

After a brief intermission the closing work was the "Serenade No.1 in D Major, Op. 11," by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897).

A serenade is one of those lighter types of music formulated in the 18th century. It is music for the evening and contains six separate pieces, in mood if not in style.

Brahms was in his 30s and living in a restful town called Detmold - outside Hamburg, Germany - when he composed Serenade No. 1.
Clara Schumann
's influence helped him obtain a "job" in the town, which had been the center of a princely court that flourished during the 16th and 17th centuries. Such courts always encouraged and supported the arts, and Detmold continued the tradition.

If any work on the program presented a challenge, this one did. Brahms is always challenging and often rhythmically complex in order to get the sound he desires. There were a few unconvincing moments  perhaps only to my Brahmsian prejudices  but never any faltering.

Conductor Owen exacted every ounce of sonority and power the players could give, and here again there was greater clarity because of fewer instruments.

It was an evening of the most satisfying and highest quality music-making any ensemble might achieve, and surely Camerata New York fully deserves a triple star rating.